Chopin

BARCAROLLE op 60

CHOPIN POLONAISES

Like the war poems of Rupert Bridges or Wilfred Owen, or the war drawings of Goya, Chopin’s Polonaises are visions of conflict. From spangled generals pumped up with their own self-importance, on careering horses, swiping off enemy heads, to women pleading for mercy, offering themselves to save their children, Chopin, a clandestine of war himself (remember that permit he couldn’t get for France with his Russian papers) appears like a foreign correspondent, commenting, making asides, ironically, sarcastically, melancholically. His friendship with Delacroix (The Battle of Missolonghi) surely led him to wish to state his own feelings on the subject of war.